A Lady Most Dangerous (Helen Foster) Read online

  “How much?” he asked.

  “How much do you make in a night?” Helen countered.

  He scoffed, and it turned into a hacking wheeze. Undoubtedly contagious, Helen thought grimly. “That don’t matter. It’s a body you want, not shite. It ain’t cheap getting a body. And if they’re alive?” he shook his head slowly. “Very costly. You and the medical men wanting bodies….you need to pay.” Helen hadn’t thought about competition for bodies. Doctors were known to steal bodies in order to dissect them. Apparently they bought washed up corpses too. She blinked as the reality of it all set in.

  “How often do you find bodies?” Helen asked curiously, trying to ignore the nausea clogging her throat.

  He sucked his teeth absently, which was enough to make Mary gag lightly behind her. “All bodies or just alive bodies?”

  “Umm, any?” It somehow seemed like a trick question.

  “The really dead ones? Not too often. They usually get sucked under. Devoured by the fish and the pockets.”

  “P-p-pockets?” Mary asked.

  “Big uns. Huge bubbles of gas – step into it and you’re a gonner. Swallow you whole. That happens a lot I expect. But alive or so newly dead they don’t decay? I’d say a few a week.”

  “A few a week,” Helen repeated.

  Mary’s voice was high and slightly hysterical. “I can’t do it. I can’t come out here twice a week to check out dead bodies.”

  Helen shot her a quelling glance.

  She turned back to the man and flashed a smile. “Right. So how much do the medical men give you for a body?”

  He told her an amount and Helen tried to convert it in her head. She thought it came to about twenty dollars a body. Seemed cheap enough.

  “Okay. You send someone to me and I’ll pay you double that.”

  He looked her up and down suspiciously, as though judging whether or not she would be able to pay.

  “What about moving it?” he finally asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Let’s say you want the body. How will you get it to where you want it?”

  “Oh. Good question. Can’t really stick a body in a hackney.” Although the only bodies they would likely want to transport would be still alive, but they had to assume that they might find whoever came back in time still in that coma-like state that both Helen and Mary had been in when they had first arrived. Unable to move or even blink because of the pain. As if every cell in their body was disoriented. Would a hackney driver transport a mostly dead person?

  “I know a collector. Goes by with a cart and picks up dead people. Gets busy when the plague hits in the summer.” He squinted, thinking. “You want those people? Plague people? I bet we can get you some of them and won’t cost nearly so much as the ones from the river.”

  “No. No…thanks. It’s live people really that we’re interested in.” This had to be the weirdest conversation she had ever had. It even beat the one she’d had with Daniel when he told her she was going back in time all that time ago. Actually, it hadn’t been that long ago. It just felt like it.

  He shrugged. “That’ll cost extra. Not used to carrying live people, you understand. It raises questions. But he’ll get the body to you.”

  “You mean the person, right? He will be able to carry any live people that we want back to our…place?” It felt weird to say home. “Because when you say ‘the body’ it makes me think we’re talking about a dead person, and I just want to make sure that you know we are only interested in transporting live people.”

  “I heard ya,” he said waspishly.

  They parted ways and Helen and Mary scrambled up the embankment, their boots sliding in muck. “I’m going to go home, I’m going to get clean, and I swear I will never come back to this place again,” Mary said, her voice high and thin.

  “Fair enough,” Helen responded. And she hoped it was true. But Helen thought they might have to come back and check every once in a while anyway, just to make sure that the man didn’t forget who they were. Although, maybe she would have to do it without Mary.

  Helen had never thought of herself as particularly adaptable, but compared to Mary she most certainly was. Mary had been here a few weeks and yet she treated each day with a new disdain, as though every day that she woke up here was still a shock and might not be permanent. But there was no going back, and the sooner Mary accepted it the happier she’d be.

  Although Helen wouldn’t say she loved it in the past, she’d made a certain peace with it. Had found a regularity to her days that wasn’t half bad. They’d taken a small house in a decent part of town, and had a maid and a cook who took care of the mundane chores.

  And every day she scoured the papers, looking for some indication of what Edward was up to, able to track his movements because he was so famous that sightings of him were reported in the gossip columns. But sometimes it seemed like it was worse to know where he was and what he was up to, because almost every time he was mentioned, so was his fiancée. Invariably described in minute detail from her hairdo to her parasol as she attended events in London high society. She was beautiful, perfect and chaste, everything a Victorian lady should be, and so far away from Helen that they were almost a different species.

  Helen didn’t go to parties and meet the right people; didn’t know anything about choosing the right clothes or saying the right thing. She couldn’t be and didn’t want to be the woman good enough for the Duke of Somervale. Although Helen had to admit it would have been nice to have been the woman scandalous enough to screw the Duke of Somervale. But that was impossible. The duke was complicated. He was overbearing and paternalistic, assumed that he knew what was best, and was too much of a gentleman to do the things that Helen knew needed to be done to survive.

  They climbed into the carriage and it rocked forward immediately, the driver just as eager to get out of there as they were apparently. Mary was quiet. Which was odd because the Mary that she knew was loud and always ready for a good time. “You’re very quiet,” Helen said. There was something about a carriage that was almost like a confessional. It was close, dark and intimate, and Helen hoped that Mary might open up on the ride home, tell her what was wrong.

  “I won’t stop bleeding,” Mary said, the words so soft Helen thought she might have misheard her.

  “What?”

  “I haven’t felt right ever since I got here.” Mary was hunched in on herself, her right hand over her left forearm, her whole posture one of defeat. “I just…bleed. At first I thought it was the worst period ever, but I know it’s not. I can feel it, like there’s something not right inside of me. We were not meant to travel back in time, Helen. Think of all the men and women that died. We survived. But maybe we don’t. Maybe we’re dying too.”

  Fear settled inside of Helen. She hadn’t bled. She’d been weak and tired, but she hadn’t had any physical signs that her body couldn’t handle the time travel. But she’d been an anomaly; genetically tinkered in just the right way that she survived while hundreds of others hadn’t.

  Mary’s abilities were different than hers. Helen could channel radiation and electricity, and even kill someone with her energy, although it was beyond exhausting. Plus she could survive in the cold; an ability that had saved her life when the boat she had been on sank a few weeks ago. As far as they had come in terms of genetic engineering, there were still things beyond their knowledge. And what if what Mary said was right, if her genetic code was just different enough that she couldn’t heal herself while Helen could?

  What if she lost Mary? She cleared her throat, wanting to get rid of that feeling of almost choking that she got right before she started to cry. Crying would not be reassuring. “No, Mary. You’re going to be fine. It just takes time. You just need rest and you will feel better.”

  “But what if—”

  Helen interrupted her, “Okay, I love you. But your ‘what ifs’ are terrible. I want you to practice saying, ‘it’s going to be fine. We are going to save
the day,”

  “That’s too many syllables,” Mary grumbled. “The opera is tomorrow. All I have to do is make it to then and after that it won’t matter if I’m sick or if I die.”

  “That’s not going to happen,” Helen said sharply. “You’re going to be fine.”

  But Mary’s eyes were already closing in sleep, something she did a lot of. Before they had come back in time they had been best friends. Mary had been confident and happy, a wicked fighter, an impressive drinker and up for any challenge.

  The Mary who had come back in time was someone different. She was full of secrets. Mary said she had arrived three days before Helen’s boat sank, but whenever she tried to ask Mary about those lost days, Mary would shut down and not respond. It had been Mary’s idea to patrol the riverbank for people, and Helen suspected that Mary’s own time travel experience had inspired the idea. She wanted to know what happened to Mary on that riverbank, but she wouldn’t pry. All she could do was hope that Mary would tell her when she was ready.

  Helen could give Mary time to emotionally heal, but physically she needed to be ready tomorrow night. Mary had come back for two reasons. The first was to save Helen. Apparently she’d died out there in the freezing water; at least that was what they had concluded when the duke’s diary had been found almost 200 years in the future. It had been filled with newspaper clippings that detailed the boat’s explosion and the death of Baron Colchester.

  Edward had saved her life. Not that she’d ever get to thank him.

  The second was to prevent an assassination. The Allies had gained intelligence that the Germans were trying to alter history by assassinating the Prince Regent while he attended the opera. As far as Helen was concerned, it seemed beyond risky to assassinate a prince in hopes of creating a stronger Germany in the future, but what the hell did she know?

  In the timeline Helen had come from, Victoria had ruled for decades, and while the Prince Regent waited for his mother to die, he spent the years to come smoothing relations with France, making them an ally after years of enmity. He also spent a lot of time—and had a lot of money spent—on improving the British Navy, making it the most powerful navy in the world.

  The Germans hoped that his premature death would shift the balance of power in Europe drastically, increasing Germany’s strength, preventing the English from aligning with the French, and stopping England from acquiring an empire with their impressive navy.

  It made Helen’s missions seem small in comparison. Why worry about the creation of a weapon they could use in the future, when they could change the whole balance of power in Europe? Why worry about World War II if they didn’t need to lose World War I?

  The whole thing was mind-boggling. And greedy. So, tomorrow night they were going to the opera to stop the Germans from assassinating the Prince Regent. She feared Edward would be there although the odds of seeing him were small. She’d be sure to stay away from him, though. Wear a cape and stay out of sight.

  Mary snored and Helen winced. The future depended on Mary who was sick, and Helen who couldn’t show her face in case the duke found her and caused a scene.

  “Yeah, right,” she muttered. As if Edward would cause a scene. If he saw her she knew what would happen – he’d give her an upraised brow of surprise and frown a little at her deception. It wasn’t like he cared about her or missed her. She’d blackmailed him. He was probably overjoyed to have her out of his life. Helen shivered and hoped that tomorrow went as planned – save the prince, avoid the duke and save the future.

  Simple.

  Chapter 3

  “I just wish it were not so dark,” Katherine, Edward’s fiancée said, looking down at her gown with a slight grimace. They were on their way to the opera, and Edward only hoped they could get there before his sister Amelia and Katherine started squabbling. His sister did not like his fiancée, and the feeling was mutual. At least he thought it was; Katherine was quite good at hiding her irritation behind a bland smile and cutting comment.

  “Black? You mean you wish your dress wasn’t black?” Edward’s sister said, her tone conveying how ridiculous she thought Katherine’s comment was. He shot Amelia a quelling look and she rolled her eyes at him. If Katherine heard Amelia’s snide tone, she at least had the good grace to ignore it.

  Someday his sister would marry. Sooner if what Helen had told him was correct. His sister would elope with a longtime family friend. A love match. Would they be happy? Would her husband realize how precious his sister was? How lucky he was to have a woman who thought of herself as an equal, as a helper, as someone who would take on the world as if they were in it together?

  That wasn’t the deal he had with Katherine. Not that it was explicit of course, but he was the duke. She was marrying him because of his title. He was marrying her because of her vast fortune and the land she would bring with her. Whether or not their marriage was a success in the eyes of the world would be determined by the fulfillment of one thing —children. Ideally, all of them male. If she did that, she was successful.

  She would then hand the children off to a servant and spend her days shopping and gossiping. She’d spend his money and undoubtedly get that trip to the Continent she wanted. She’d take lovers and go to parties. By society’s rules, that was a perfect marriage.

  He caught his hand mid-rise, ready to run it through his hair. He needed a new nervous habit. Something less obvious to display his…discontent. Stress, even. But were marriage and children so nerve-wracking? Hadn’t he always known the day was coming, closing in on him like a shark after a minnow? He could swim, he could dart and change direction, but he was going into that big black maw of marriage whether he wanted to or not.

  “Yes, but for how much longer must we wear black? The queen looked nice in blue.”

  “She’s mourning her husband,” his sister said, flashing Edward a look that said Katherine was an unfeeling ice queen. He pretended not to notice.

  “It’s been years!”

  “She must have really loved him,” his sister said.

  Katherine made a small noise, like a kitten growling. It was somehow feminine but displayed her pique. He wondered if she’d worked on that noise or if it was a natural response. Katherine said, “Well, that shouldn’t affect me! I have gowns moldering away, desperate to be worn, and I can’t because of one old woman’s grief. Tell her, Edward, it isn’t fair!”

  “It isn’t fair,” he said blandly.

  “Really? Do you also have a closet full of gowns moldering away, Eddie? We’re only wearing black because the queen will attend. Next week, you can wear a beautiful gown while the Queen goes back to crying over her lost love,” Amelia said.

  Edward tried to change the conversation. “No, no gowns in my closet. But a few weeks ago a waistcoat appeared. My valet Horace must have picked it up somewhere. It’s pink as a raw salmon. I’ve never seen such a thing. And if someone has to wear it, it will not be me.”

  Katherine gasped. “If Horace chose it, it must be wonderful. Perhaps the fabric is very fine or it brings out your eyes.”

  “Let us hope, for both our sakes, that my valet does not spend too much time trying to complement my eyes,” Edward said.

  Amelia giggled.

  “You are always so severe in your attire, Edward. I do wish you would wear something a bit more…flashy. Oh! I just got a new gown, and salmon might go perfectly with it.”

  “I will not wear a horrendous waistcoat in salmon. Trout silver, maybe,” he said, voice deadpan.

  “Don’t you want to make your fiancée happy? I think the two of you in matching colors would be lovely,” Amelia said, her voice treacle sweet.

  “No, you don’t. You’re being mischievous,” Edward said, directing the comment to his sister.

  “Everyone will be there tonight,” Katherine said, and Edward suspected she had missed the joke entirely. “Even the Princess Alice. All the way from Germany.”

  “Yes, it should be quite the crush,” Amelia agreed.<
br />
  Katherine patted her hair, as though it might have changed in the last five minutes. “Have you heard about Beatrice, the queen’s youngest daughter?”

  Amelia leaned forward, her corset creaking slightly. “What?”

  “She was apparently found—alone—with her father’s librarian!”

  “Should she find a book surrounded by people?” Edward asked, being deliberately obtuse.

  “He’s quite handsome. Came over at the insistence of her father.”

  “Not English, then?” Amelia asked.

  “Of course not!” Katherine said.

  Amelia leaned forward a little more, her tone lowering as though she were about to tell them both a big secret. “There is a group, radical, and they said we shouldn’t have a German ruling family. That we should be like America; get rid of the ruling family and have a democracy. Send the Saxe-Coburg Goethe’s back to the Continent.”

  Katherine gasped. There, he’d finally seen it – a genuine unguarded reaction. Edward found it slightly underwhelming. “Don’t repeat that, Amelia. It’s near treasonous,” he warned.

  Amelia waved a hand airily. “I’m not saying it in front of the royal family; I’m saying it to you. And it’s just what I heard – I don’t believe it.”

  Edward narrowed his eyes, suspicion dawning. “Who did you say you heard that from?”

  She blushed. “I didn’t say. But I heard it….at Gunther’s the other day.”

  He shifted in his seat, looking at her fully. She looked away guiltily. He said the next words slowly, letting her know this was serious. “You’re telling me you went for an ice with the fashionable crowd, and they were speaking of treason? That they want a revolution, and to get rid of the ruling family and put an Englishman on the throne?”

  “Umm, maybe.”

  “If I find out Charles is saying these things you’ll never see him again, do you understand? That’s dangerous, not just for him but for us. At best, he would be ostracized by his peers. Any feelings you’ve developed, all of that will be for naught. I’ll lock you away for life rather than let you marry some radical idiot.”